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Damon Kiesow

@damon.kiesow.net

4.9K followers 3.5K following 4.1K posts

Knight Chair in Journalism at Mizzou. Authored first textbook for News Product Management. Previously: Director of Product at McClatchy. Big @newsproduct.org fan.

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Damon Kiesow @damon.kiesow.net · Nov 12

Who am I following here?

People who create, develop and protect knowledge.
Who study history and democracy.
Who take a critical eye to technology.
Who monitor public health, labor, supply chains.

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Damon Kiesow @damon.kiesow.net · 7h

DC has the most deranged ad market

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Damon Kiesow @damon.kiesow.net · 10h

A thing can be two things.

Dave Karpf @davekarpf.bsky.social · 10h

Everyone agrees that we're currently in a dotcom era-like AI bubble. People disagree what sort of bubble it is.

There are 3 stories one can tell about the dotcom crash: a startup story, a telecom story, and an accounting fraud story.

My take: it's giving Enron
open.substack.com/pub/davekarp...

It's Giving Enron

On the AI bubble, and the various echoes of the dotcom crash

open.substack.com

Damon Kiesow @damon.kiesow.net · 14h

Currently reading "Germinal." Any thoughts on Zola?

Damon Kiesow @damon.kiesow.net · 14h

Free degrees for everyone today.

Reposted by Damon Kiesow

southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social · 1d

Auspicious start for the new CBS News, laundering unattributed cop shit-talking through the incoming editor-in-chief’s blog and failing to correct a misspelling of the story subject’s name in the web headline for three days.

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Reposted by Damon Kiesow

Ben Werdmuller @werd.io · 1d

Every newsroom depends on software, but that doesn’t mean it should build it.

Here’s a framework for deciding what to build, what to buy, and why technology should be a strategic partner, not a helpdesk.

werd.io/build-what-m...

Build what makes you special. Buy the rest.

A framework for newsroom build vs buy decisions.

werd.io

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Reposted by Damon Kiesow

Bill Kristol @billkristolbulwark.bsky.social · 2d

Pope Leo quotes Hannah Arendt:

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist."

www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news...

Pope Leo calls for news agencies to stand as bulwark against "post-truths," lies and manipulation

Pope Leo XIV has encouraged international news agencies to stand firm as a bulwark against the "ancient art of lying" and manipulation.

www.cbsnews.com

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Damon Kiesow @damon.kiesow.net · 2d

I have a lecture that includes a slide that says,

“Big tech will only solve profitable problems. Not important ones.“

Damon Kiesow @damon.kiesow.net · 2d

Is “meaning“ the intent spoken or the understanding received?

Damon Kiesow @damon.kiesow.net · 2d

I look forward to the first workplace study that indicates a pattern of yelling at poorly performing GenAI tools also increasingly leads managers to abuse human workers as well.

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Damon Kiesow @damon.kiesow.net · 2d

International break. They need something to complain about.

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Damon Kiesow @damon.kiesow.net · 2d

You had me at "day."

Reposted by Damon Kiesow

Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 2d

The Daily is committed to sanitizing Vought and ignoring what they regard as unsavory ideology. Because engaging with what is actually animating Vought would make it very hard to uphold the “normal politics” framework that defines much of mainstream political journalism.

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Damon Kiesow @damon.kiesow.net · 3d

Footnote: news creators/influencers are trusted sources. Change is not waiting around for us to call.

Damon Kiesow @damon.kiesow.net · 3d

TBH for the first half I assumed this was an NYT post.

Damon Kiesow @damon.kiesow.net · 3d

With due respect to all of my friends who are grads - who cares?

Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 3d

Nothing more Harvard than for these professors to think the solution is “inform the New York Times” rather than “give the students lower grades.”

NYT push alert reading: Harvard's Campus Culture
Students who skip class and fail to do the reading still get high grades, a group of professors say. Now, they are trying to change the culture.

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Reposted by Damon Kiesow

Old White Nepo Hat @kenwhite.bsky.social · 3d

Also: if you work for ICE, even if you’re not one of the ones arresting citizens or tackling 15-year-olds or zip-tying kids together and segregating them by race, you’re part of the mechanism making it happen, and you should suffer long-term social and post-regime-change consequences.

Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 3d

Some weirdo on Twitter has been absolutely melting down for like 36 straight hours because I posted:

When this is over, do not forget what ICE did, and what ICE is. And do not make room for them in society. Make sure they know that they are, and will continue to be, reviled and beneath contempt.

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Damon Kiesow @damon.kiesow.net · 3d

And follow my logic here: People are not magically going to decide to spend their spare time on media literacy. But they do hate having their time wasted and AI Slop promises to waste a LOT of our time in the near future. We need to promise the opposite: efficient, easy to use and true.

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Damon Kiesow @damon.kiesow.net · 3d

Got ya covered:

We bring some core beliefs to bear:
• News is a public good and must be sustained in some practical form.
• News product management is journalism and upholds its highest standards.
• The goal of news is to help communities understand themselves.
• News organizations must look like their communities.
• News products are built with and for readers.
• News product is data-informed, not data-driven.
• Anyone in a news organization can be a news product thinker.

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Damon Kiesow @damon.kiesow.net · 3d

The tidal wave of AI slop adds to the evidence that scale is dead for most newsrooms and spending time on anything that is not 100% local, quality, trust and engagement is delusional.

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Damon Kiesow @damon.kiesow.net · 3d

That looks like the obvious things: good work, transparency, accountability but also: websites that don't suck, headlines that are not clickbait, social promotion that is not ragebait, ads on the page that are not garbage...

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Damon Kiesow @damon.kiesow.net · 3d

If as a journalist you don't know which photos or videos to trust on social media any more you might ask why the news media is not positioning itself to prosper from the pending consumer rush back to trusted sources.

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Damon Kiesow @damon.kiesow.net · 3d

They will make very nice indoor golf or skate parks.

Damon Kiesow @damon.kiesow.net · 3d

This may come as a shock, but society does not always have to adopt or keep every innovation that Is developed. Like: chemical weapons, human cloning, DDT, CFCs etc. That’s how it works.

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Damon Kiesow @damon.kiesow.net · 3d

Was the goal to beat Alabama or keep it close enough to get a Bowl Game.